The Club

CHAPTER 11

21st Birthday Part 2

Ding.

"Holy Shit."

Ding.

"What the fuck?"

Ding.

"What the hell is going on?"

Ugh, what the hell is going onis right. My head pounds and Kyle is being incredibly obnoxious. I open my cotton mouth and attempt to lick my lips. My eyes are crusted together and I wince as I try to force them open. I feel like I turned into a senior citizen overnight. I'm a lump on the couch and it hurts to even lift my arm to cover my face. The light from the windows is blinding. What the hell happened last night and how much did I drink?

Ding.

"This cannot be happening. It's fucking viral."

Blocking out the sunlight, I pull the blanket up and over my head while I yell at her through the thin material. "Kyle, turn that shit off and shut the fuck up. It's my day off and I want to die in silence, okay?"

I'm jolted as she jumps onto the couch next to me and my stomach rolls. I vaguely remember throwing up a lot last night, but maybe it wasn't enough. That is the last time I let her feed me tequila shots. "You've gone viral, baby."

With the pounding of my head I gently pull the blanket down and look into the bright and fucking cheery face in front of me. It's way too early for her sunshine and rainbows bullshit. "What are you talking about? I just woke up."

She gnaws on her bottom lip and looks at the laptop on the coffee table and back over to me. "Don't be mad at me, okay?"

"What did you do?" I ask as I sit up but fall back down as my head starts swimming. Fucking tequila.

"Please." She grabs onto my hand and squeezes forcefully. "Promise you won't be mad at me."

Somebody is being a little melodramatic this morning. I sit back up and pull my hand from her ironclad grip and wince at my red hand. She grimaces but waits for me to answer her question. "I won't be mad at you. Now what did you do?"

"How much of last night do you remember?"

My immediate response is to say nothing, but I close my eyes and concentrate. What do I remember from last night? I blew out the candles on my cake and then had that crazy dream. I must have crashed out on the couch shortly after blowing out the candles but that doesn't explain my massive headache. It feels like a hangover. But in order to have a hangover I should remember drinking a lot more than I did. Sure, we had shots of tequila and I was a little drunk when I blew out the flames, but I've been drunker than that before and never had this massive of a hangover.

"I don't really know. I guess the last thing I remember is blowing out my candles and making a wish."

Another ding alerts us to whatever she has going on my laptop. She glances at it again before giving me her full attention. "Shit. I guess you were more drunk last night than I thought."

"So I didn't crash out on the couch after that?"

She shakes her head slowly and her eyes go wide as another ding comes in. What the hell is going on over there? "No, you didn't. You were kind of out of it but you were insistent upon us getting out and doing something for once. You actually dragged me out of the apartment and down to the bar on the corner."

Nothing weird about that. I lay back on the couch and place my hand over my eyes. It's really fucking bright in here right now. "Okay so we had a few drinks. That doesn't explain all of that incessant dinging that woke me up or your overly chipper attitude. Or shouting something about me going viral."

Rather than say anything, she plops my laptop onto my stomach and that's when I see it. The webpage is pulled up to YouTube and the frozen video on the screen is me. I recognize the background as the same bar she mentioned and I'm standing up on the stage with a microphone in my hand. I look down the page and my eyes go wide. "Two million people have seen this?"

"Uh huh. And the number keeps growing. Check out the number of comments."

My eyes go wide. "Why would ten thousand people be commenting on this? What is going on?"

"I don't know, babe." Her unease washes away and is replaced by a huge ass grin. "Your life is about to change, that's for damn sure."

Am I ready for this? I don't know what the hell is going on. But if it gets me out of this damn town, then I am all for it.